18 November 2012

The Absence of a Movement, Para-Academic Work

'Aesthetics After Finitude' is a project that aims to question the possibility of
aesthetics, and to develop a new role for aesthetics, in terms of a
body of work on new realisms and new materialisms that has surfaced
internationally over the last decade. This body of work is united in
terms of its development of a philosophy that exceeds the confines of
Kantian correlationism, a term developed by Quentin Meillassoux in
After Finitude. Each of these
philosophers seeks to develop a new method or mode of thought that
exceeds finitude, rather than being bounded by it. Nonetheless, any
evocation of unity is extremely tenuous. A shift from the dominant
paradigm of Kantian correlationism might seem to bespeak a united
movement withfixed tenets or convictions.Such a broad shift, however,
is belied by a much more fragmented body of texts.

The
term 'Speculative Realism' originated at a conference at
Goldsmiths University in London in 2007. The term was purportedly
coined byRay Brassier, one of the four speakers at the conference,
who sought an umbrella title under which the new realisms might be
united. This term echoes Meillassoux's particular stance that he
opposes to correlationism, which he calls 'speculative
materialism'. This conference gave a platform for four speakers:
Meillassoux, Brassier, Iain Hamilton Grant and Graham Harman. Each of
these thinkers has a unique approach to realism and materialism:
Brassier, for instance, has developed 'eliminative nihilism',
whilst Harman, along with other philosophers like Levi Bryant, works
within what he calls 'object oriented ontology'. The division
between eliminative nihilism and 'OOO' is so great that –
despite being gathered under the 'after finitude' umbrella, these
philosophies are fundamentally incompatible.

Several
key thinkers that are bound up in moves to develop a mode of thought
after- or beyond- finitude emerged from a rogue philosophical
institution attached to the University of Warwick, called the
Cybernetic Culture Research Institute, or the CCRU. This institute
was founded by Nick Land and Sadie Plant in the mid-90s and dissolved some years later; the description of the institute is as enigmatic as its
research:'CCRUretrochronically triggers itself from October 1995, where it uses Sadie Plant as a screen and Warwick University as a temporary habitat. [...] CCRU feeds on graduate students + malfunctioning academic (Nick Land) + independent researchers + [...]. At degree-0 CCRU is the name of a door in the Warwick University Philosophy Department. Here it is now officially said that CCRU "does not, has not, and will never exist".'
The institute website now contains a series of articles related to
occultism or hyperstition. Robin Mackay, the director of the UK arts
and publishing institute Urbanomic which publishes the journal
associated with speculative thought, Collapse,
Ray Brassier, and Nick Land were all associated with the CCRU. The
institute was also home to a series of blogs that are associated with
the Iranian philosopher and novelist Reza Negarestani. This was a
crucial site for the development of the experimental philosophy that
would drive speculative work in the following decade. This 'site'
might be said to continue virtually in the journal Collapse,
which is published by Urbanomic,
has been the germinal ground for much thought and writing that is
associated with the after-finitude project and the speculative
project more generally, even if it veers sharply from an adherence to the name 'speculative realism'.

Thus,
in addition to speculative thought being a vigorously contested
field, we find a second key feature of this amorphous and intensive
thought practise: para-academic work. The CCRU and its members or
associates existed (and largely continue to exist) on the margins of
academia. This trend towards para-academic practise is strengthened on a
conceptual level too: critical to much speculative thought is the
possibility of subtractive and non-institutional thought,
particularly that associated with Francois Laruelle, who has coined
the term non-philosophy, and founded the Organisation Non-Philosophique Internationale.